Fig 1: Battle (Clipartsheep, n.d.)
On this September, there is significant changing in digital marketing of one of the world’s big brand, Nescafé. It has moved its corporate website to Tumblr which is a social media platform. This change has led Nescafé to be the first global brand that uses social media instead of its own official website. Nescafé’s objective of website transformation is to respond customers’ behaviour which has changed. According to Bennett (2015), in 2014, people spent time on social network approximately 2 hours per day and this trend is continuously increasing. Therefore, using social media may approach more consumers and could build new customer experience which lead to a stronger relationship with customers.
Fig 2: Nescafé Tumblr (Nestlé, 2015)
Although, online websites have been one of the marketing communication tools that many brands use for informing their customers of corporate’s information, this is the 21st century when progressive technology has led to multiple communication channels, especially, social media which are channels that can reach to a large number of customers. This change brings about question that “Is official website necessarily for branding?
Many brands have their own official website which much information is putted such as company’s profile and products’ detail. However, at this time, most of customers surf the Internet on their smartphone that cannot displays complete website similar to be on computer. As a result, official websites turn into boring websites that chase customers away to find information from other sources. Although, brands have adjusted their websites to a responsive design in order to be user friendly, it may not be able to utterly respond to every customers’ need. Customer behaviour is changing, at this moment, they don’t want only information which is forcefully pushed from brands but they would like to interact with brands. Therefore, official websites may be not enough, and brands have to modify their communication channels in order to respond to their customers.
If brands do not want to close official website like Nescafé,
what should they do?
Fig 3: Coca-Cola Website (Coca-Cola, 2015)
This is one of good examples of transforming a corporate website, Coca-Cola. In 2012, Coca-Cola declared that “Content is King, and the Corporate Website is Dead” (Brown, 2013), so it has re-launched its own official website under “The Coca-Cola Journey” theme. A new website is driven by “Unbottled” blog which share interesting content instead of old-fashioned way of giving information that can conceal weakness of old website. It also provided brand storytelling and space that can be interactive with customers. Thus, Coca-Cola website is not only corporate website but it is a social media where customers can engage with.
That you’ve seen, although, these two brands use different methods to revamp their official websites, they change in a similar way, using social network platform. This may be because of the fact that brands need to build their community where they can approach their own customers and also their customers can share experience with other customers. However, whatever methods that brands choose for modifying their official websites, the most important thing to keep websites alive is content. It should be interesting and up-to-date in order to attract customers.
What do you think about this? Should brand have an official website or using social media?
Reference List:
Bennett, S. (2015) 28% of Time Spent Online is Social Networking. Available from: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/time-spent-online/613474 [Accessed 5 November 2015].
Brenner, M. (2014) Is The Corporate Website Dead? Available from: http://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/corporate-website-dead/ [Accessed 5 November 2015].
Brown, A. (2013) Every Day is Election Day. Available from: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/coca-cola-unbottled/every-day-is-election-day/ [Accessed 6 November 2015].
Clipartsheep (n.d.) Boxing Gloves Clipart Images. Available from: http://www.clipartsheep.com/boxing-gloves-clipart/ [Accessed 6 November 2015].
Coca-Cola (2015) Coca-Cola Journey. Available from: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/ [Accessed 7 November 2015].
Nestlé (2015) Nescafé first global brand to move from traditional websites to Tumblr. Available from: http://www.nestle.com/media/news/nescafe-moves-to-tumblr [Accessed 5 November 2015].
KANOKNUP 
From my perspective, I think websites and social media have different objectives. A website should be used to provide their company profile and some information about their brands while social media I think it is used for talk or communicate with consumers. Although, users access to company’s website less than social media or never access to it, I think companies should not ignore their websites because it is like an existing place to tell customers that you are still on the internet.
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As your comment that “customers access to company’s website less than social media”, so I think if brands would like customers to regcognize their brands, using social media is better?
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Yes!
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My opinion is similar to Plocka’s. Each platform play a different role. I think that official website is good to say their history and objective, even in each social media, such as Twitter, FB, they pursue in a different way. We need to see the issue with different characteristic by industry. All of your example is food organisations. They need constant interests and feedback from consumers. So maybe Nescafe chose the platform more enhancing their strategy like interaction with consumers. Not only Coca-cola new-website, nowadays but also many companies have evolved to innovative website that can express their colour effectively.
And, in terms of the official mobile website, we can select pc-website on our mobile. (of course, it;s hard to see that using small mobile tho)
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Of course, I agree with you that social media and website can represent their brands in different way. Some brands have adjusted their own website for being trendy. However, at this moment, social media are easily to access customers. Thus, I think that using socail media is more effective than official website.
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Social media are really important to present their brands but sometimes they are not completely show products to all range of population, especially people from rural area. They familiar with traditional advertisement likes billboard or tv broadcasting, and of course, less internet users. Moreover, in China, country which has the largest population in the world unable their people to access those social media, thus how Nescafe solve to this problem?
From my point of view, I think they should keep their own official website and using old-fashioned advertisement to let their coffee products are well-known from labourer to high society.
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I agree with you that brands should use both traditional and online media in order to reach customers. However, brands don’t have to use all kind of media to reach all customers, it’s depends on their target, For Nescafe, in China, Tumblr is not blocked, so they can also use Tumblr as official website.
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